Meditation Music

Whether your path to enlightenment is eight- or 12-fold, or six-point-oh-two-times-ten-to-the-23-fold, a little music can well assist you in your journey. Gathered from the four corners of our round Earth (meditate on that for a while), this music captures the moment. Spiral Rhythm, a tight-knit group of musicians and singers who have honed their craft by the light of countless festival bonfires, puts us in the right zone from the outset with "Om," and the quest for a beautiful head-space continues with the likes of Brian Eno, Sigur Rós, and soundtrack maestro Hans Zimmer.

Indian flute and Italian installation art will help settle your thoughts, in Next Steps.

As the seeker said to the pizza man, "Make me one with everything." If only it were that easy. The meditative path is, by its very nature, a solitary one, though there are many guideposts along the way. We've crafted a carefully selected accompaniment to the sound of one hand clapping, featuring avant-garde ambient composer Harold Budd in collaboration with Eraldo Bernocchi on "One," the delicate opening piece written for a video installation at Siena's Palazzo Delle Papesse; and otherworldly flautist Steve Gorn, who possesses a rare talent for Indian music ("Rag Desh").

Take it to a higher plane with a touch of Californian ambience, in Deep Cuts.

You only have to renounce a tiny portion of your worldly goods in order to obtain the benefits of having a personalized soundtrack to your enlightenment. Not that you would be proud of that or anything. That would be wrong. But you could be highly satisfied. And that's OK. Really. So continue to tread lightly on the rice paper of life, in the company of prolific New Age composer Medwyn Goodall, who rounded out the last century with Comet (featuring "Twin Moons"), and ambient Californian, Robert Rich: "Pa Tanak" can be found on his amazing 2003 acoustic project, Temple of the Invisible.

The practice of meditation can be found in virtually all cultures, sometimes with a religious element, sometimes not. Whether you are trying to attain enlightenment or merely closing off the rattle and chatter of everyday life in order to bring body and spirit into harmony, it's all good. Many cultures have used music as an aid to meditation, from Christian Gregorian Chants in the 9th century to Tibetan Buddhists in the 21st. You can too, thanks to our mixed gathering of like-minded, cranially refreshing artists like Austria's Gandalf, Anglo-Indian vocalist Sheila Chandra, the groundbreaking Afro Celt Sound System, and new age pianist/composer Kevin Kern. The slow train to all-stops transcendental boards right now.